One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Thursday, May 17, 2012

The Fungus Among Us: Cult TV’s Most Memorable Eukaryotes.

Mushrooms,
yeasts, and molds…oh my.

Eukaryotic
life forms – fungi – are non-vascular
organisms that reproduce by means of spores. Unlike bacteria, fungi always possess a
nucleus and are made of thin threads known as “hyphae,” or all together, in
networks, “mycelium.”

Typically
fungi are not motile (meaning capable of motion), but in cult-television
history that’s not always the case. Additionally, many fungi are saprophytic, meaning that they release
digestive enzymes and then absorb the digested food. Many fungi in the real world are also mutualists (lichens, for example), but
some (especially in genre television) are decidedly parasitic in nature.

Over
the decades, monstrous (and sometimes helpful…) fungi have appeared in many
popular science fiction programs. Thus today,
I offer a list of some of the most memorable TV fungi, both friendly and hostile.

7. Blake’s 7: “The Web” (January 30,
1978). In this early episode of Blake’s 7 by creator Terry Nation,
the Liberator is ensnared in space in an
organic, fungal web. The web is a
tool of an immortal creature called Saymon (Richard Beale), a corporate life
form. On the planet below the web,
Saymon has genetically engineered creatures called Decimas that Roj Blake (Gareth
Thomas) attempts to free from enslavement. Meanwhile,
Saymon – one of the legendary Auron “Lost” -- desires the Liberator’s power
cells. Unless he gets them, the Liberator
will be permanently ensnared in the gossamer filaments of the space fungus.

6. Lost in Space: “Welcome Stranger”
(October 20, 1965.) In this sixth episode of Irwin Allen’s Lost in Space written
by Peter Packer, an astronaut from Earth named Jimmy Hapgood (Warren Oates) lands near the
Robinson encampment, unaware that the tiny fungal life-forms on his capsule are
evolving in the friendly atmosphere and rapidly becoming giant, tentacled monsters.. When he offers to take Penny and Will back with him on his shape, he has no idea that the area is overrun these frightening monsters.

5. Space: 1999: “The Last Sunset” and “Journey
to Where.” In “The Last Sunset” by
Christopher Penfold, aliens from the planet Ariel gift Moonbase Alpha with a breathable lunar atmosphere. Dr. Helena Russell
(Barbara Bain) leads a team to judge the possibility of reclaiming the surface
of the moon, but her Eagle crashes in a wind storm.

While attempting to get word to Alpha, a
member of her exploratory team, controller Paul Morrow (Prentis Hancock) discovers mushrooms growing in the new atmosphere.
He samples one, and soon turns psychotic, imagining the moon's surface as a future
Garden of Eden, made into a paradise by the mushrooms, by so-called “manna from
heaven.” Eventually, Helena and her team
are rescued, and it is learned that the mushrooms actually possessed dangerous
hallucinogenic elements…

In the second season episode “Journey
to Where,” Helena falls ill from “viral pneumonia” after a time travel trip to
Earth in the year 1339. Captured by
people of that era, Helena, Commander Koenig (Martin Landau) and pilot Alan Carter (Nick Tate)
are imprisoned in a cave, where Helen sees fungus growing on the cave walls. She notes that “fungoids” are the basis for
the only drugs known to cure viral pneumonia.
She asks Koenig to pick some off the wall to treat her, and creates herself a remedy.

Incidentally, this particular scene
between Koenig and Helena is repeated, almost note for note in the first
season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Arsenal of Freedom.” Only there it took place in another cave, and between another
commanding officer and CMO: Captain Picard and Dr. Crusher.

4. SGU: “Cloverdale.” (October 26, 2010). In this second season episode of
Stargate Universe, the crew of Destiny is menaced on a lush alien planet by a
dangerous fungus creature. Matthew Scott
(Brian J. Smith) is infected by it, and the fungus begins to grow, out-of-control, on his arm. As the fungus rapidly spreads towards Scott's trunk, Dr. Rush
(Robert Carlyle) suggests amputation (with bone saw, no less...), but reverses course when he learns the
fungus is already in Scott’s blood stream.
While unconscious and infected by the alien fungus, Matthew imagines an elaborate fantasy in
which he returns to the picturesque home-town called “Cloverdale” and awaits
his wedding day with Chloe (Elyse Levesque). Meanwhile,
walking plant creatures that resemble triffids could hold the key to reversing
Matthew’s rapidly-spreading infection.

3. The X-Files: “Field Trip” (May 19,
1999). In this sixth-season episode of
The X-Files by John Shiban and Vince Gilligan, F.B.I. agents Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Mulder (David Duchovny) visit my neck of the woods, North Carolina, to
investigate the death of two hikers in the woods. They soon run afoul of a hungry, giant, subterranean mushroom
that begins to slowly absorb and digest them.
During this lengthy process, Mulder and Scully both hallucinate that
they have returned home to their lives. In Scully’s
case, she imagines Mulder’s death and wake.
In his case, Mulder tracks a story of alien abduction. The duo awake just in time, and with Skinner’s (Mitch Pileggi) help escape from the cave of the giant ravenous mushrooms…

2. Primeval: Season 3. Episode 5 (April
25, 2009). In this episode of the BBC
time incursion series, an anomaly opens up in a millionaire's apartment. It leads to Earth's distant future, where an assistant soon inhales the spores of a giant fungus. He returns to the presents and spreads the
spores to his heartless boss, Richard Bentley (William Scott-Mason), who begins to
transform into a terrifying fungus-man.

Meanwhile, at the ARC (Anomaly Research Center) one of Christine Johnson’s (Belinda
Stewart-Wilson) men is also exposed to the fast-growing fungus, and evolves
into one of the mushroom monsters as well. Trapped in a lab with the rapidly-growing fungi, Connor Temple (Andrew-Lee
Potts) realizes that extreme cold holds the key to halting the spread of the avaricious fungus from the future.

Connor's discovery comes not a moment too
soon, as team leader Jenny Lewis (Lucy Brown) is imperiled by the Fungus Man, and exposed
to the toxic material…

1. One Step Beyond: “The Sacred
Mushroom” (January 24, 1961). This is
perhaps the strangest episode of the paranormal anthology One Step Beyond, and, in fact, one
of the strangest of all episodes in cult TV history. Whereas most episodes are fictionalized accounts of paranormal events, this episode is a documentary and travelogue.

Series director and narrator John Newland
hosts a trip to a remote village in Mexico to determine along with experts Dr.
Puharich, Dr. Barbara Brown, spiritual guru David Grey and Stanford professor
Jeffrey Smith, if a special mushroom with hallucinogenic properties (called “X”)
is capable of enhancing extra sensory perception in humans. In one scene, we watch as the members of the team sample
peyote before our eyes.

Then, upon returning to America, Newland
himself also consumes the special mushroom in Dr. Puharich’s Palo Alto laboratory
and is tested for an increase in psychic power and ESP. Although the late John Newland reported to me that he experienced flashbacks for months after sampling the mushroom, he never did feel any
kind of psychic awareness.

Still, this
episode has become legend because it is likely the only time in prime time
history that a series host – and Golden
Age Hollywood star – tripped before our eyes on American network television.

5 comments:

This kind of shows/episodes remain the supreme in ickiness (that is the correct scientific term, btw). It literally makes your skin crawl. I think it all goes back, at least for me, to watching the classic Japanese monster feature 'Attack of the Mushroom People (AKA 'Matengo') by the great Ishirô Honda on TV. I can still recall the Saturday afternoon that happened [shudder]. Fun post, John (if a little uncomfortable ;-)).

I'm so glad you mentioned Attack of the Mushroom People...what a creepy movie. And I wholeheartedly agree with the "ick" factor you mention regarding fungi. The Primeval episode with the man-covering fungus still absolutely grosses me out. Not so much the monster, but the manner by which the fungus spreads across human flesh, seemingly unstoppable. Gross.

While reading this I was thinking of Matango too. The end is so creepy. The whole film is creepy actually, but the ending really packs a wallop.I'm going to have to find that "One Step Beyond" episode. We may have it somewhere in our mound of DVD's. I'll be searching for it today.

I agree, that movie is the stuff of nightmares. I haven't watched it in years, but maybe it's time to haul it out.

I hope you do find "The Sacred Mushroom" in that DVD stack. What an amazing episode, with John Newland "tripping" on camera at Palo Alto. Wonderful stuff. I wish CBS would release the final two seasons of One Step Beyond on DVD, so we could watch a good copy of this episode (as well as the creepy "If You See Sally"), but I don't think it's in the works...

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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